Month: April 2019

Tinder has changed the way that my generation views dating and hooking up. Tinder’s presence has changed the way that people indicate a preference for another person. One of the reasons that it has been able to do this so successfully is by taking the first interaction from a dynamic game to a static game. A dynamic game is one in which moves are sequential someone makes the first move and someone makes the second. A static game is one in which the moves happen at the same time. In the real world, someone always makes the first move; it Continue reading to swipe or not to swipe→

With April Fool’s day just behind us, I stumbled upon a “semi-fictional” Planet Money video on a very important topic: the price of a tooth. As the accompanying article states, the amount parents pay their kids when they lose a tooth has risen much more than one would predict based from inflation. Twenty years ago, the price of a tooth was around $1.30. But last year, it was a whopping $4.13. These numbers are all tracked by Delta Dental, a large dental insurance company. In 1998, they began tracking the amount of money kids find under their pillow by surveying Continue reading An Economic Indicator to Watch: the Tooth Fairy Index→

During a procrastination fueled Wikipedia binge, I stumbled upon a page on the mainly European phenomena of the Pirate Party. Pirate Parties are political parties based on a movement started in Sweden when some activists created a semi-satirical anti-copyright political party. Pirate Parties are varied in their approaches, but they tend to value direct democracy, government transparency, and digital/technological freedoms. Pirate Parties often attract younger, more technologically savvy voters, who most likely feel fed up with the political system and ready to vote for Parties which are less traditional in nature. Pirate parties have been waning in significance due to the Continue reading Pirate Parties and the Free Market of Ideas→

Three weeks ago I wrote a blog post about Boeing and Airbus as an example of a duopoly market. The recent Boeing 737 crashes were a hot topic at the time, breaking out of the realm of news for airplane nerds such as myself, and into the realm of mainstream news. During the time when that article was written, it looked like Boeing might be in serious trouble because consumers were beginning to switch flights to planes besides the Boeing 737. Consumers had gained information and acted on it. In my article I included that virtually every relevant country except Continue reading An Update on a Previous Boeing/Airbus Article & The Short Attention Span of the Modern Consumer→

India is home to the largest democracy in the world. With over 900 million eligible voters, and 2100 political parties with conflicting beliefs both religious and political, the popular vote can come to some pretty unpredictable conclusions. The last election was in 2014, and nearly 70% of eligible voters participated, far more than the 58% that participates in the United States election, and even greater when compared to the midterms. These numbers suggest that while engaged in their politics, despite the intense diversity among political parties and citizens. If we think of India’s voters as consumers, and the political parties Continue reading India’s Election; An information Failure→

Most of us do not agonize in our daily lives about Federal Reserve appointments. They come and go with little public intrigue. But there are a few reasons why President Trump’s nomination of Stephen Moore to the Federal Reserve Board should scare anyone, regardless of political persuasion, who follows the economy. Moore, a noted partisan, is up for one of seven seats on the Board of Governors for a five or eleven-year term, depending on which seat he is nominated to fill. His proclivity for playing fast and loose with facts is well documented – his main consistency is that Continue reading Federal Reserve Nominee Reeks of Partisanship: Why it Matters→

Space has fueled some of the most ambitious stories and in recent years prompted some of the biggest names in business to take action. In 2018, a Harvard professor named Matthew Weinzierl wrote about the emerging space economy in a work titled “Space, The Final Economic Frontier”. In this writing, he presents a framework based on three economic principles, “1) establishing the market through decentralization of decision making and financing for human space activities; 2) refining the market through policies that address market failures and ensure a healthy market structure; and 3) tempering the market through regulation in pursuit of Continue reading Space as an Emerging Economy→

Multiple health trends have risen in popularity over the past decades, but few have persisted as long as the organic food movement.  According to the USDA and Organic.org, “organic” produce must be grown without synthetic pesticides, synthetic fertilizers, sewage sludge, genetically modified organisms, or ionizing radiation. Animal products must come from animals that have not taken antibiotics or growth hormones and have been fed 100 percent organic feed. In order for products to receive the “made with organic products” seal, they must contain at least 70 percent organic products, and the remaining 30 percent must not use certain prohibited practices, Continue reading Organic Food: Worth the Cost?→